Author's Note: I'm very much overwhelmed by the positive comments, alerts and favourites I've recieved. Thank you so much, each and every one of you. The encouragement is invaluable, and apparently, it makes me update faster.
This chapter has quite a bit of character introduction, but the next one will begin living up to the fic's M rating. I hope you enjoy.
II.
"Wake up, please."
Chilly hands cupped Bella's features, and a sweetly, musically insistent voice repeated, "Stop sleeping and wake up now, please."
Cocoa-coloured eyes flickered wearily and the girl recoiled with a poorly suppressed yelp. Her companion was a tiny, china-featured immortal with docile, crimson-rimed eyes. Ebony hair fell about her shoulders and a snowy sundress clung to willowy limbs.
"Why are you making that sound?" she inquired.
"I'm—I'm so sorry. Nobody's woken me up like that…well, ever, actually," Bella murmured, stretching in clothes that carried an acidic note of sweat amidst the salt stains.
The little vampire wrinkled her nose, perplexed.
"Next time, just tap me on the shoulder or something." The calm stitched with gentleness came readily, masking a night of agony scraped raw. "What's your name?"
"I am Renata. Master Aro says that I must take your measurements. For clothes." A tape measure appeared from a concealed pocket and the girl brandished it with something approaching competence. "After that, I am encouraged to feed you. Because humans get hungry quickly." It seemed that the speech had been memorized by rote.
She ushered Bella out of bed and neatly began looping and examining numbers. For a moment, Renata resembled Alice and Bella almost laughed.
"You remind me of a friend."
Renata glanced up, uncomprehending, as though every word was clear, but strung together, the meaning faded.
Loneliness fell upon Bella's chest, ribs snapping eagerly beneath the granite of loss until the shards of bone tore through the webbed sinew of her lungs, stealing breath and leaving copper on the tongue.
[-]
Bella began to wonder whether, despite Aro's claims, the Volturi did indeed favour the theatrical, spawning legends of vampires who flitted in candlelight, a night-time aristocracy that exchanged wine for blood. It would certainly seem so, she concluded, led through breathless corridors where torches stole the air, melding it into flame that danced over blemished stone.
Even as she kept pace with her companion, she could not help fidgeting with the collars and hems of her new clothes, opulent and odd. Fashion, she decided, could be added to the list of things that Renata didn't understand, along with sarcasm, metaphor and the need for personal space.
As her guide paused before a door that looked no different from any other, the brown-eyed girl asked, "I will be speaking to Aro?" The question was merely a breath and a tremor.
"No. You will be speaking to everyone," Renata said, serenely unaware of the discomfort her words welcomed.
The door opened, seemingly of its own accord, and then Bella was certain—it was not blood that fed the Volturi, but roiling, rising fear.
[-]
"My dear ones, it is my pleasure to introduce Isabella Swan," Aro said, the fire's light catching his irises and teeth, his smile turning masklike. "Sulpicia and Athenodora have so looked forward to meeting you," he added, steering the frail-boned girl into the chamber's center with webbing fingers on her shoulder.
Bella let herself glance at the two unfamiliar women. The one curled at Caius' side waved a hand in mock-salute, her bruised-plum lips upturned in a Cheshire cat's grin, while the glorious, leonine creature whose gaze never left Aro merely curved a brow. It was perhaps the least enthusiastic welcome she could remember receiving.
"I…um, it's nice to meet you as well," she mumbled, carefully examining her distorted reflection caught in glossy shoes.
The silence crept in on dainty paws, punctuated only by the susurrus of fabric-bound pages, carelessly flipped by Marcus.
"This has been fascinating. Is there anything more you wish to say?" Frost-haired Caius tapped on the table's ancient oak, an irritated rhythm of nails and alabaster.
"I was, of course, hoping to bring this up less abruptly but we are here to discuss Bella's transformation."
"This situation does not necessitate discussion."
"Caius, Caius, I think it is prudent to allow Miss Swan to choose when she wishes to be changed into one of us." A casual, parchment-skinned hand brushed Bella's cheek, perhaps in reassurance, but the stony caress elicited liquid lightening across her skin. A moment of indecision tugged at her; she did not know whether to lean into Aro's flinty palms or to flinch away, a fawn startled by a wolf in winter.
Her heart hammered its treacherous rhythm against her ribs as pink petaled her cheekbones. This, this misplaced magnetism was unbearable, and Bella knew that there was no hiding it from her immortal audience.
Sulpicia was smiling now, a fresco of assured death rendered in scarlet and gold.
"If you could change me later…a few weeks, maybe, I'd really—it'd be great." Bella's voice shivered, stumbling upon familiar words and innocent, feathery lies. The notion of surrendering warmth and gurgling, spilling blood seemed unbearable to contemplate in a room where five beautiful corpses, seductive in their madness, watched her with filmed eyes.
"A month is certainly acceptable. Meanwhile, I will advise you to be cautious, Miss Swan. Your blood, as young Edward may have told you, is delicious. In your position, I would not stray to the younger guards."
Aro edged pale fingertips over the flesh of his companions, searching for omitted possibilities, before interlacing his hand with that of his mate. "I believe that we are finished here," he dismissed, his tone careless and light. "If any of us wish to speak with you, my dear, we will let you know."
He did not face her as he spoke his farewell. Sulpicia's throat was against his lips, while something between desire and intoxication drew a veil over his features, shrouding and strange.
[-]
It was only when she returned to her room that Bella realized where her hand had strayed during the ambling trek through sandstone and firelight. Splayed against her cheek, her fingertips mapped Aro's touch, an invisible constellation of desire too raw and new to be believed.
She was mad, from grief or exhaustion, she knew. How else, why else did the thought of lucent skin and wide, fascinated eyes draw heat, ephemeral as a mirage in high summer, through netted veins and knotted capillaries until her heart quickened to an impossible pace?
Whore, her mind whispered, because she had known love, sincere and shimmering at the edges, and because she was willing to exchange it for this soft, rising lunacy.
Liar, her thoughts added, when she tried to convince herself that this sentiment, difficult and blackened, was mere illusion.
Author's Note: Feedback is greatly appreciated.